Remember when midnight actually meant its name? As in sleeping soon after dusk and awaking with the sunrise? Sounds like a fantasy or some distant childhood memory, because midnight now marks bedtime and not the middle of it. This isn’t a sleep article, because I and many wise others have already chided on the importance of keeping to a good circadian rhythm. A practice that really shouldn’t be underrated, but here we are, wondering why nighttime looks nothing like it.

Singapore strives to be the best in everything, but we didn’t mean brightest literally. If you’re born and bred in the #1 light-polluted country in the world, your night vision is likely underdeveloped. Yes, while not to the efficient degree of nocturnal critters, our eyes are inherently adapted to see in low light conditions.

The nation is also 34th globally according to the World Happiness Report. Sure, this could be attributed to the money-minded culture among other socio-economic factors… but it’s no secret either that bad sleep makes you cranky. Or if scientific jargon sounds more convincing: research has shown that poor rest leads to depression.

Light is used to ensure safety and combat dengue at night, which sounds sensible until you count the sheer amount of lamps in one estate alone. Scientific evidence is inconclusive on whether outdoor lighting actually deters crime too. If anything, World Economic Forum alludes to the opposite effect, where a spotlight is shone on the victims and property; easy pickings for criminals.

We are so attuned to artificial light even in daytime that any storefront without it looks both unenticing and unready for business. Come sundown, exposure to any unnatural light, not only the blue rays emitting from screens, suppresses the production of melatonin. Is it scaremongering to say that studies link it to a slew of other chronic diseases including the big C?

Inorganic light doesn’t just disrupt our sleep cycles. Not to get all Captain Planet, but ecosystems in nature too. You’re likely aware of the high mortality rate of turtle hatchlings and other circumstances of disorientation in animals that rely on celestial light for foraging, hunting, migration, and reproduction.

Some may not care for this interference with their behaviour and survival, but here’s a gentle reminder: ECOSYSTEMS ARE CONNECTED. Exhausted moths reduce pollination, coral reef loss kills habitations, and population decline in birds, bats and frogs obviously affect the species on their food chain. It’s nearly not a doomsday message to say it’s just a matter of time before it comes around to bite us in our collective complacent rears.

French laws mandate non-residential buildings to switch lights off between 1am to 6am, as other European countries are working on timers and motion sensors. While some of us are working on a petition to turn off half the lights in their city (think of the economic benefits on top of the environmental ones!), or at least have them all be dimmer or yellower, the rest are certainly able to start from the ones at home. How novel, except that this lightbulb moment came about years ago, so long that the idea now looks dimmer in the face of a worsening world.

Still, no time like the present; just as long as we don’t sleep on it.